In springtime, the tulips bloom, the grass turns a vibrant green, animals are born—and dumpsters in college towns are at their ripest for picking.
Each year at around this time, college students move out of dorms and rented homes and apartments, and when they move on, they leave behind a treasure trove of furniture, bicycles, gadgets, home appliances, and other detritus that’s scooped up by anyone unafraid of picking through someone else’s trash.
A WiseBread post declaring the first few weeks of May as among the best times of year for dumpster diving explains:
Harried college students, rushing to pack and move out while completing finals or preparing for graduation, don’t have time to sell or give away their excess stuff, or they simply don’t care that it goes to waste. The result is that during finals week on through graduation, campus dumpsters and the sidewalks in college towns are rife with serviceable stuff often in excellent condition.
A related conversation at Reddit began when one commenter related his recent experience poking through the castoffs at a nearby college campus:
Every dumpster was completely packed and there was at least 10 other people dumpster diving and I still made out like a bandit. My treasure haul included a mini-fridge, 1tb (completely full of porn) external hard drive, cleaning supplies, flower pots, vacuum cleaner, plastic dresser thing, kitchen scale, and best of all a functional Xbox 360!!!
MORE:
Yale’s Dumpster Diving Foodies
Word of the Day: ‘Trashure’
College by the Numbers